This ornate Victorian marketplace was the setting for Diagon Alley and the Leaky Cauldron in the Harry Potter films.

Once called the "Polish Gold Coast" it is an icon of the neighborhood that bears its same name.

The oldest bibliophilia club in America, with exhibitions on historic books and graphic arts.

Elevated freight railway turned wildly successful urban park.

A crumbling hospital from the 1850s on Roosevelt Island.

A tiny museum housed in a New York freight elevator specializes in the "overlooked, dismissed, or ignored."

A shining, cold, black organ lies in San Francisco's financial district.

Not merely a museum – but a whirring powerhouse that offers a subterranean peek into the heart and soul of cable car operations.

An essential stop before plundering, BYO Cutlass.

A shop full of natural curiosities, carnivorous plants, and costumed taxidermied mice.

San Francisco's newly reopened hands-on science museum.

Carnivorous plants, medieval aphrodisiacs, and the largest original wood structure glass conservatory in the western hemisphere.

Its buzzing collection honors vibrator history.

Pick up all of the cosmic knick-knacks under the sun or take a creative writing course, all offered in this novelty storefront.

What's that on the side of that building? Va Va Voom, it's Bettie!

To find the "unicorns of the deep" you've got to go downstairs.

World's largest collection of serial killer artwork and other macabre exhibits.

Fonts are born and bred here at the oldest letterpress type foundry in the United States.

A library built during San Francisco's pioneer times is a student's retreat, bibliophile's sanctuary, and chess player's delight.

A modern mechanical planetary system, part of a 10,000 year clock.

A series of waterfalls so massive they straddle the border of Argentina and Brazil.

Final resting place of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton.

The best place to send your postcards home from Antarctica.

An abandoned whaling station on an active volcano offers hot springs in Antarctica, surrounded by ruined giants of industry.